In a recent conversation with a CISO, he was lamenting the amount of time he spends on incidents and events related to employee-generated email.

He certainly believes what we have seen at MessageGate which is that most unauthorized usage is not malicious but that there is certainly a lack of awareness about the implications of hitting the send button and creating a corporate record.

The conversation evolved and he remarked “you know what we need? A Miranda Warning for email. Something to let people know that anything they put in email these days may come back to them to explain, defend, or justify.”

That it has come to this or that email has become both our best friend and worst enemy is telling. At some point, the hassles of email will outweigh the benefits but we are still a long way from finding a better way to communicate and share in the workplace. In fact, one of our customers actually performed an analysis on the cost of an email vs. the cost of a phone call.  Email won…hands down.  The challenge is to get people to stop and think about what they are typing (or thumbing) before sending it along.  There are certainly a variety of ways to drive awareness from training seminars to a product like our SenderConfirm offering.

One company chooses to send email awareness emails – the irony in that speaks for itself.

Bad boys bad boys
Watcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do
when they come for you